The other day, my wife was playing me a recording she made of the incredibly annoying teenage girls in the same waiting room as her, complaining about their stupid teachers and I remembered the times I would listen to something like that with the smugness afforded a successful middle-aged man who had conquered life.
But listening to it as a fired dude without any job or prospects, just having been cut loose from his gig of fifteen years with no ceremony or respect, it was a different experience. Credibility was absent in my mind, and it’s all mindset baby.
Because I never had any credibility even with my job. At least, my job wasn’t credibility, although I put it in the same mental bucket. If what I thought was true, I wouldn’t have been let go, and I wouldn’t be writing this right now.
(I also wouldn’t have been able to go to the gym at 10:30 and not get back until 1:30 and not give a damn what anyone thought about it as long as I answered just enough emails to continue to qualify for having a severance but perhaps that’s a bit too transparent.)
Anyway. Here’s what you do when you feel like you’re a complete failure: just go with it. It’ll pass. This shit doesn’t come from your mind, and it doesn’t come from your circumstances. It comes from your gut biome.
Seriously. That’s another secret to life I’m giving you for free, right there. Guts cause feelings not the other way around. You know how when you feel nervous about something or slightly sick and queasy and anxious? (If you don’t, then I applaud your sense of mental well-being and fantastic-adjustedness.) What do you usually think about that? Probably you think it’s because of something going on in your life.
Nah. What’s really happening is you feel that way and your mind picks a thing to think it’s feeling that way about. At least most of the time.
When you get fired from your job of 15 years and are suddenly thrust into a world where you again have to worry about the lowest level of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, you’re allowed a little genuine anxiety and a few sleepless nights.
But overall, just ride out these little adventures of the gut biome. Whether you’re feeling negative in a sad way or angry way or just plain nervous. Think happy thoughts. Force yourself. Think of things that are good, like “I’m not on fire right now” or “At least my eyeballs aren’t bleeding.”
Note: if you’re on fire or your eyeballs are bleeding, feel free to think of other things.
And eventually you will find that the bad feeling passes. They always do. The trick is to attach too much importance to when you feel happy and remove all significance from when you feel bad.
This will have good results in the long term. And you can tell Nelson Muntz to swivel on it.
Later!
